Staines....Good Time to Buy a Property??

Following last week’s article, I had an interesting chat with a chap who lives in the Thames Club area of Staines.  He popped into our offices on the High Street whilst his better half was doing some shopping.  He is thinking of buying his first buy to let property and wanted my opinion on the state of the Staines property market and whether it was a good time to invest.

He was however particularly worried that with all the headlines of a booming housing market, there wouldn’t be enough demand from tenants.  One of the best pieces of advice I can give to those looking to invest in property is a simple trick of the trade.  You can judge the affordability of an area’s property market (and thus how much demand there may be) by simply finding the ratio of the average property price to average salary – the lower the ratio, the more affordable the property is.

When we put this to the test, we found that Staines currently has an average property value of £361,600.  The average salary of someone living in Staines is £34,442. This is a ratio of 10.49 to 1 (not bad when you consider the UK national average is 9.5 to 1).  Most lenders will only lend up to four and a half times income, so, to buy an average property in Staines, a first time buyer needs to be on a salary in the early £80,000’s. Even then, they would need to raise the 5% deposit which, when you take into buying fees, would be in the order of £20,100. Tenant’s inability to raise that sort of money for the deposit is driving demand for rental property in Staines.

If you would like some advice about buying to let, be you a landlord with an existing portfolio or someone thinking of investing in the rental market for the first time, please pop in and see us at our office on the High Street in Staines or, email us on joy.cook@martinco.com or trevor.cook@martinco.com.